The Jungle

It is very interesting to learn how countries became who they are today. Of course I know about American History, I spent a whole year in high school and a semester in college reading on the subject and I love it (minus the slavery). What was interesting to learn abut this week was the Haitian revolution. Here we have a country with 40% of the world's sugar and coffee, 8,000 plantations, 500,000 African slaves and only 40,000 white people not of mixed race making Haiti the richest colony in the world at that time. It seems to me it was just a matter of time before the slaves overthrew the Europeans, considering the numbers. And so it began, with the help of Toussaint Louveture that Haiti became Haiti and also became impoverished and unstable. Nobody wants to live in poverty, but who wants to be a slave their whole life?

This revolution, including the French and Spanish American ignited a passion that led to greater movements for human kind. Finally an end to slavery, women gaining rights and people associating with a nation, in other words having a place to call home. But, does having a home bring peace or create more competition?

What having a nation did do was give a group of people enough of a grouping to get things done together. What were those things? Well, let's say it started a little thing called the Industrial Revolution that lasted about 250 years. People of that time learned they could make changes themselves and that anything could become better. Most all countries improved and made their world function faster, but it also created a huge class distinction and the poor were very poor and very oppressed. Through this period of time we learned about socialism and communism and those in theory are great options to the capitalist world that provided well for the elite and middle classes, but not the laborers. Through it all, Russian was the only country to actually adopt socialism as their political choice and although any poor person who have chosen a socialist society, America was the only country who said, No WAY!

Capitalism rev ed up the industrial revolution but left big chucks of the population without much to choose from. And so it seems that this is the way the world works well. When we look at communist countries today, none of them are truly what communism is defined as, rather they are a dictatorship. Those countries doing well are a society where there are a handful of wealthy people and the rest are lower middle class and/or living in poverty. The good news is that today there are far more opportunities to create a better life.